Paula Smith was an active member of several fandoms during the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

She is well-known for a number of things in fandom:

In 1973, Paula Smith first coined the term Mary Sue by writing a piece in "A Trekkie's Tale" in Menagerie #2. The piece was satirical in nature, lampooning the original Star Trek female characters who became love interests for the central characters in the story.

In 1984 in Warped Space #50, Paula Smith contributed an essay to ongoing dialogue about characterization issues in fan fiction. She discussed something known to fanzine readers and writers called Langsam’s Law. She was quoted by Langley as saying there is a "special caveat for writing media-based fiction. Don't make an established character do or say something out of line with his established character, of if you must, give good, solid reasons why."[1]

At DTFF, I found zines. Trek was off the air by then and this was just after Devra Langsam, who published Spockanalia, the first Star Trek zine, organized the first Star Trek convention, which was held in New York in 1972. [Carol Lynn], who became my friend and copublisher, was there. The next year, 1973, I went to the Toronto Worldcon and met a lot more people, a lot more fans... Around early 1973, I'd met Sharon Ferraro. I was at Kalamazoo College and she was at Western Michigan University. We got together and formed a science fiction society between the two colleges and called it KWest*—"kwestar." Sharon and I organized a con in 1974 in Kalamazoo called KWest*Con and we got Harlan Ellison as our pro GOH [professional guest of honor] speaker. We had to pay for his flight and room and board, but we didn't have to pay an honorarium... A couple of hundred people attended the con. We made our nut. We brought Harlan to Sharon's house and fed him a chicken dinner. Sharon was a big Ellison fan. She had said, "We can get him," and we did! And we had a great time.

People were writing a lot of Trek stories, and printing them. There were two routes into Star Trek fandom. There were these rather older women in science fiction fandom already who said to themselves: we can do cons, we can do zines, about Star Trek. The original SF zines sometimes contained stories. The big difference was that science fiction had a professional outlet back then. Once you published at the fan level, you could go on to the major leagues if you were good. If you weren't a good writer, you'd get tired of being told, 'This is crap,' and you'd stop writing after a while. But in Star Trek, there was nowhere else to go. So if you developed your craft, your Trek zines soon had better and better stories. It seemed like there were two age groups in early Trek fandom: 18 and 35. The other route was for the baby boomers who had the feeling, 'Gotta write!' They just wanted to do something. As soon as they went to the cons and saw the zines, they'd think, 'That's what I can do!' And it crystallized all over the country and there were zines as far as the eye could see. And they kept coming and coming. We used to joke about Warped Space, which started publishing around 1975, 'Oh, here comes the Tuesday afternoon Warped Space. Here's the 3 PM edition.' The editor was Lori Chapek [later Chapek-Carleton]. There was the MSUSTC—the Michigan State University Star Trek Club. Again, a university club; colleges and universities were where many boomers found out about fandom.

We were part of that early network which took the science fiction fandom template and ran with it. We were the string in this supersaturated sugar solution that allowed the rock candy that became media fandom to crystallize. To quote a famous science fiction writer (R. A. Heinlein), 'When railroading time comes, you can railroad.

Paula Smith is NOT...

This is a helpful photo of Harlan Ellison and table from Warped Space #14 proving that, despite the fact they are the same height, Paula Smith and Harlan Ellison are two different people.

Paula Smith is NOT Harlan Ellison. Even their eye color is different. See accompanying image.

Paula Smith is NOT H.O. Petard -- this was denied by Petard in Implosion #5": "Last week, a local fan informed me in all seriousness that HOP is really Paula Smith. That's not true -- a fact for which both Ms. Smith and I are duly grateful."

Paula and Controversy

If there was a hot topic brewing, Paula was there, right in the middle. She could be as adept at stirring it up as she was of trying to calm it down.

Paula wrote many stories just to get people talking and to simply see if she could pull off a difficult subject. Her fic, Surrender was one of them, as was The Logical Conclusion.

When the issue of explicit art and other material being displayed at cons arose for the first time, Paula took on the subject of censorship and sex:

I agree that ST pornography is a lousy thing -- it is so badly written. In search for titillating themes, good or even credible characterization is ignored, and plots degenerate to the simplest push-push gimmickry. A lousy Get-Together story is worse than a lousy Mary-Sue story, because the reader doesn't expect a Mary-Sue necessarily to be any good. If it is uneven, juvenile, or just plain silly, that is typical, and the reader is not disappointed. But when a reader takes up a story on an adult theme, she expects an adult treatment, or ought to. A simpering, or brutal treatment of sex is evil in a most fundamental sense, because such trivializes and degrades our greatest humanity -- love. But sex, and sexuality, per se are not dirty and disgusting.

When the subject of slash was tearing the letterzine S and H apart, Paula (as temporary editor) wrote:

Some folks are hobbits: they need to be aware there are wider vistas than that of Bag End. Some are wizards: they must take care not to strike and blast as forcibly as they feel like, because there is always some fuzz-footed clown out there just itching to swipe yer Ring. The most useful thing anyone can learn is when to shut up. Like now.

About reviews and criticism:

If you were going to spend so much time typing up a LoC to send to a zine, and then make them type it up to put in their zine, you might as well make it interesting. I received a lot of criticism for not being so nice and encouraging in my critiques, then I would go to a con and be my usual effusive self and someone would say, 'You're so much different from your writing; you're so much nicer!' Somebody told me I have a soft chocolate center. [2]

An Editor Reviews Her Own Zine

I've been looking over the last sixteen issues of 'Menagerie,' and lo to my wondering eyes what appears but my very own curmudgeonry. A bit startling, you may imagine. But there it is, the grousing and the griping and the Old Virtues. 'Men' was not an innovative zine --even way back in '74. We weren't the first to go offset. We were never the most useful or informative zine, nor the most beautiful, nor the most general, nor the most consistent. We were never in the front ranks of Kraith, no K/Sism pro or anti, nor S.T.A.R., nor the current rearguard action against SWars. And nobody called us punctual. What probably best describes 'Menagerie' is 'reactionary.' Early on when sloppy ditto was the best reproductive method of choice, we wanted a cleaner look and went to offset. When every second story in fandom involved the unlikely adventures of a sixteen-year-old lieutenant on the Enterprise, we did A Trekkie's Tale. When Kraith dominated the earth's surface, we wrote and printed 'An Abortive Attempt.' When everybody else was writing about the Big Three on the Big E, we tried to explore the rest of the universe. Later, when get'ems were the vogue, we did The Logical Conclusion, billed as 'the get'em to end all get'ems.' Overkill, we 'got' Spock five times. We started the first review column (first 'Notes from Cap'n Dunsel,' later 'Bored of Review') because we wanted to publish our reactions to the zines we'd read. Our only positive crusade, good writing, we carried out in part by refusing what we considered poor stories, and critiquing in depth the ones we too on. In our lettercol and con report began none other than the K/S controversy. And satire, our usual mode of yuks, is the most reactionary idiom of all. Well, F [equals] ma, folks: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We were occasionally the conscience of fandom; sometimes we even made it think. We were a major force in making ST fanlit aware of itself, and only through self-awareness is there the possibility of self-improvement. We did produce a change in fandom, I truly believe. We made it a little less complacent, a bit more self-critical. Maybe we went overboard. If so, now that we're retiring (in this incarnation anyway), somebody else can be the reactionary and bring fandom back to center. [3]